maxwellatoms

[maxwellatoms]

Either I'm going crazy or I just saw your name in the credits of a Jellystone episode I'm watching. Did you work on an episode in the latest season? What was it like?

I worked on the entirety of Season 3, and it was a blast while it lasted. It was great to work with C.H. Greenblatt again along with a few old friends and a whole bunch of new ones. It was actually fun to make, and I hope that rubbed off on the episodes.

#jellystone

[maxwellatoms]

I’m not sure if you take any asks for jellystone but I was wondering if jellystone will ever get any sort of merchandise? Also I’d love to know why Snagglepuss is either co-commentating with mildew or alone but mildew is always with him? Or Does snagglepuss recommend him for the jobs?

Mildew is a bit of a sad sack, so I'll bet someone is putting in a good word for him. Though if you look really, really close this season, you might notice that Mildew's life isn't all bad.

As for merch... I have no idea. I'd settle for another season. There are so many incredibly fun and silly stories that we came up with toward the end but didn't have time to make.

#jellystone #max #mildew

[maxwellatoms]

So, if Billy, mandy, and grim meet Hello Kitty, how would it go?

Not well, I'd wager.

[maxwellatoms]

Okay. You might have me on the last season. I don't remember CN caving on widescreen until after I left, but maybe I just threw it on my Pile of Grievances without really checking.

Big Boogey, Spider Queen, and other specials don't count, though, as I was able to convince CN that these were "events" that might end up on DVD (lol) and should be treated a little bit "fancier".

Sorry to bother you again, Max, but have you noticed that [adult swim] has been airing some (though not all) Season 6 episodes in their original widescreen format? Just asking beause you previously noted Underfist as "the only HD thing we did" months before [as] started their Checkered Past block.

None of Billy & Mandy was widescreen. I know that because I was begging for widescreen, as were most of the other creators. Instead, CN decided to crop the top and bottom of the screen so that Boomers wouldn't think the black bars on the sides of the screen meant their TV was broken (I kid you not).

So I'd guess that's the version you're seeing?

It's a weird way to eat cornflakes, man.

That whole debacle landed us with storyboard panels that had two action safe lines, two title safe lines, and a vague shape that encompassed both places the CN "bug" might be. In the end, you were left with this tiny actionable screen space which made it really difficult to stage characters. Especially ones that some fool designed to be one and three-quarters heads tall.

#aspect ratios #black bars of doom

[maxwellatoms]

Sorry to bother you again, Max, but have you noticed that [adult swim] has been airing some (though not all) Season 6 episodes in their original widescreen format? Just asking beause you previously noted Underfist as "the only HD thing we did" months before [as] started their Checkered Past block.

None of Billy & Mandy was widescreen. I know that because I was begging for widescreen, as were most of the other creators. Instead, CN decided to crop the top and bottom of the screen so that Boomers wouldn't think the black bars on the sides of the screen meant their TV was broken (I kid you not).

So I'd guess that's the version you're seeing?

It's a weird way to eat cornflakes, man.

That whole debacle landed us with storyboard panels that had two action safe lines, two title safe lines, and a vague shape that encompassed both places the CN "bug" might be. In the end, you were left with this tiny actionable screen space which made it really difficult to stage characters. Especially ones that some fool designed to be one and three-quarters heads tall.

#aspect ratio blues

[maxwellatoms]

Good day, I have a couple of questions regarding Underfist. 1.) How many seasons would you envision Underfist having? 2.) Were the chosen members of the Underfist team in the movie always planned to be in the team, or were there some early character cuts and or additions to the cast? 3.) In an earlier blog you mentioned that you wanted Eris to be a part of Underfist in future seasons, so would she reform from Naughty and Nice Eris or would the two take turns leading missions for the team?

I've answered one or two of these before, but that's on Tumblr for being as organized as my desk drawer.

I always saw Underfist as being a series of "specials" rather than seasons. So each one would've been an hour or whatever and then you're on to the next one. I guess in modern terms, it would've been a slightly-bigger-budget-than-I'm-used-to limited series.

I always wanted the team to be malleable, with Irwin probably being the consistent central figure. I had actually planned to "kill off" Hoss at the end of the second one after healing Eris' heart. Then the third one would've had a sort of "Search for Spock" thing going on. Anything after a third seemed like too much of a pipe dream to even pipe about, but I'll bet we would've seen Ernie the Space Crab once more...

#underfist #fantasy #cartoon network

[maxwellatoms]

What kind of video games do you like to play Mr. Atoms?

So many! Assuming there's time. These days there's generally not, so I've been bingeing Vampire Survivors in half-hour doses.

Above is a gif from Noita, my top game of the pandemic. It's an old-school "Metroidvania", but every pixel is simulated and you're a witch who can manipulate her spells (and thereby the world) in a seemingly infinite number of ways. Here, I've built magical "buzzsaws" around myself, which blinded me to the shadow amoeba. In Noita, almost every death is due to hubris, and I think I love that pendulum swing. If you're lucky and skilled, you can become a walking whirlwind of destruction, but you're always your own worst enemy. Bonus: You can turn your vomit into rats.

I'm currently on a break in the midst of my Baldur's Gate 3 run, with a party consisting of my BG2 character's daughter, Karlatch, Lazelle, and Shadowheart. Ladies' Night!

I'm also playing a bit of Shadows of Doubt. I'm not sure it'll hold up long-term, but it's got a lot of potential.

I don't really limit myself by genre or platform, but I'd say that I primarily play indie PC games. The games in my Steam library that I keep going back to again and again?

Cities: Skylines: A chill City Building Simulator. Lots of fun mods.

Darkest Dungeon: This thing is a classic strategy game IMO.

Death Road to Canada: A light, fast Project Zomboid. Dogs with guns!

Dwarf Fortress: For me, it's the ultimate fantasy sim. I love it so much. Looking forward to Adventure Mode finally appearing on Steam.

Project Zomboid: The ultimate lonely 2D zombie apocalypse survival game. Or non-survival game, I suppose.

Total War: Warhammer: For when I'm in a strategy-y mood. Like a lot of people, I'm a bit soured on the modern DLC scene, so I'm still waiting on #3 even though I'm a Chaos stan.

Not on Steam? I do play some Star Citizen from time to time. I backed it a decade ago. I used to joke that it was the game I was going to retire into, but more and more that's looking less and less like a joke. Still, it's made some good progress in the last couple of years and I'm hopeful that repair and engineering turn out to be fun.

The game I'm looking forward to most would be the next Elder Scrolls. I know it's still a ways off. Ever since my Nereverine landed in Morrowind with the intention of becoming a just and righteous cleric and instead found herself an unwitting villain and colonizer, I fell in love with the Elder Scrolls and it's deep, gray lore. It is (for me) a great way to really get into a character's head. Roleplaying... go figure.

Since Morrowind (and a backtrack into Daggerfall), I only allow myself one canon playthrough. My rule is to "let it ride", so that aside from death, if I screw up or if something unexpected happens I don't save-scum. All of my characters are related, either by quest or bloodline. I already know that my next character will be Aventus Aretino (the kid you catch summoning the Dark Brotherhood). My Skyrim character (above) had adopted him and then left him in the hands of a vampire, so I should be covered even if there's a big time jump. Now I just have to wait six more years for the game. And then maybe two for mods. God I'm so old.

I need to spend more time with Dave the Diver.

Anything current I'm missing out on?

#maxwell atoms #video games #all over the map

[maxwellatoms]

hello, my fav cartoon as a kid was grim adventures. also the zombies gave me a recurring nightmare about zombies that could turn you just by emitting a gas from their skin, and they would burst their arms through the walls of wherever you were hiding. also Billy was there and was making everything worse. thank you

Yeah. I get that one too.

#nightmares

[maxwellatoms]

The art team had to create a lot of diagetic artworks to fill out the world in Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed. I ended up doing a lot of the posters and propoganda artwork you see around the city, as well as all (I think?) of the signs for the shops. This was probably my favorite billboard, which probably appears briefly in some long-shot. As an Art Director, you get precious few chances to make jokes...

#maxwell atoms #art director #naked mole rat #jokes

[maxwellatoms]

gonna be honest here max, i never thought a person of your age would even know what discord was. don't take that as an insult though, im just kind of surprised

I've been using Discord for almost ten years, on and off. I'm about to turn fifty and I still play as many video games as time allows. My cats poop in a litter box that cleans itself. The future is now.

[maxwellatoms]

Cartoon Network posted this on Christmas Day. What do you suppose Mandy is smiling about?

Her utter disregard for IP.

#maxwell atoms #cartoon network #sick burn

[maxwellatoms]

Hey Maxwell, was wondering if you or your patreon will have more old and new artwork of yours. I really love you art style growing up (still do now) and wanted to see more concept art whether it be billy and mandy stuff, cancelled projects, or just dumb doodles or personal illustrations. Would you ever consider making an art book or showcase your sketchbook? Anyways, thanks for making my favorite show and keep on making weird horror stories 🤘🏾

I've never been the best with curating my own artwork. Or even taking basic care of it. I don't even want to tell you how many of those giant post-apocalyptic Dead Meat cars I built just ended up in a trash can. That's probably why I'm so cool giving (and selling) all of my old Billy & Mandy art to fans. A lot of the good stuff is in the hands of people all over the world now, which would make photographing it difficult to do. And apparently it was already too difficult to bother with when I actually had the stuff in my hands. Long story short, an art book seems less likely by the hour.

Actually, I do have some photos. And some art I haven't parted with yet. All of that stuff is likely to appear in "Billy & Mandy -vs- The Entertainment Industry", which is my post-B&M, animation apocalypse documentary. And that stuff will definitely be on the Patreon.

When I started the patreon, I was saying it'd be 50/50 "The Upward Expedition" and "B&M vs The Entertainment Industry". The former is a lot of work and the latter is a slow burn that won't really start shooting in earnest until February. Right now, it's a lot of The Upward Expedition development.

In relation to weird horror stories, there may be a Fun Experiment coming soon as well...

#maxwell atoms #patreon #stuff

[maxwellatoms]

The Upward Expedition's already got fan art! Thanks, @iwander12!

#the upward expedition #maxwell atoms #other farts

[maxwellatoms]

Do you think the new division of Cartoon Network Studios will end up exploiting and abusing AI to make new cartoons of their old properties?

I wouldn't put it past any studio to do this.

We're at the end of The Animation Industry As We Know It, so studios are going to do anything and everything they can to stay alive.

The way I see it is:

AI "art" isn't actually art. Art is created by humans to express ideas and emotions. Writing prompts allows a computer to interpret human ideas and emotions by taking other examples of those things and recombining them.

Just because something isn't art doesn't mean that humans can't understand it or find it beautiful. We passed a really fun prompt generation milestone about a year ago where everything looked like it was made by a Dadaist or someone on heavy psychedelics. Now we're at the Uncanny Valley stage. Soon, you won't be able to tell the difference.

It's not just drawings and paintings that are effected, but writing and film. It's every part of the entertainment industry. And the genie is out of the bottle. I've seen people saying that prompt-based image generators have "democratized" art. And I see where they're coming from. In ten years, I can easily see a future where anyone can sit down at their desk, have a short conversation with their computer, and have a ready-to-watch, custom movie with flawless special effects, passable story, and a solid three act structure. You want to replace Harrison Ford in Star Wars with your little brother and have Chewbacca make only fart sounds, and then they fly to Narnia and fistfight Batman? Done.

But, sadly, long before we reach that ten year mark, the bots will get hold of this stuff and absolutely lay waste to existing art industries. Sure, as a prompter I guess you can be proud of the hours or days you put into crafting your prompts, but you know what's better than a human at crafting prompts? Bots. Imagine bots cranking out hundreds of thousands of full-length feature films per minute. The noise level will squash almost any organic artist or AI prompter out of existence.

AI images trivialize real art. The whole point of a studio is to provide the money, labor, and space to create these big, complicated art projects. But if there are no big, complicated art projects, no creatives leading the charge, and no employees to pay... what the fuck do we need studios for? We won't, but their sheer wealth and power will leave them forcing themselves on us for the rest of our lives.

The near future will see studios clamp down on the tech in order to keep it in their own hands. Disney does tons of proprietary tech stuff, so I'm sure they're ahead of the game. Other studios will continue to seek mergers until they can merge with a content distribution platform. I've heard rumors of Comcast wanting to buy out either WB or Nick. That's the sort of thing I'm talking about. The only winners of this game will be the two or three super-huge distribution platforms who can filter out enough of the spam (which they themselves are likely perpetuating) to provide a reasonable entertainment experience.

400,000 channels and nothing's on.

I do think that money will eventually make the "you can't copyright AI stuff" thing go away. There's also the attrition of "Oh, whoops! We accidentally put an AI actor in there and no one noticed for five years, so now it's cool."

One way or another, it's gonna be a wild ride. As the canary in the coal mine, I hope we can all get some UBI before I'm forced to move into the sewers and go full C.H.U.D.

#maxwell atoms #ai generated #prompters #c.h.u.d.

[maxwellatoms]

Are there any Mandy openers that gave interesting origins?

If not, which Mandy opener is your favorite?

I remember reading a blurb by Stephen King(?) about postmodernism, and how you have to be careful about adopting little bits of culture from other places or you won't remember what's yours and what's not. Those are sort of the Mandy openers to me. Most of the early ones were original snarky quotes that just popped into my head. A few were famous quotes from others. Now I have a hard time discerning what was what. "Push the button, pull the chain. Here comes the chocolate choo-choo train" was originally a Jean-Paul Sartre quote, for example, when I spent the last 40 years thinking I'd made it up. All of those kids from Mrs. Emenheizer's 3rd grade class probably think I'm a sham now.

My favorite opener is probably "Quick! Jump into the TV set while no one's looking!" (a famous saying widely adopted after the Mongols defeated the Seljuqs at the end of the 13th century). At the time, CN wasn't allowing our characters to interact with TV sets by turning them off or on, or by pressing their faces to the screen. We were in the middle of Screen-Tipping Paranoia, and for some reason everyone was worried about kids crushing themselves with Televisions. The Mandy opener was my passive-aggressive dig at the censors, and I was certain they'd make me remove it. But they didn't. So if you were flattened by your own TV after watching it, that's on Cartoon Network.

✌️

#maxwell atoms #billy & mandy

[maxwellatoms]

Hello, I hope you are well. I look forward to the stream on Thursday.

I suppose first I should ask if you would rather me send asks through here or through Patreon. But anyway, here is something I have been wondering. I have quite a bit of a preface though:

I never actually grew up with Grim Adventures. I was a wee little tot when it was airing, so if I was watching TV, I was watching one of those preschool shows. When I did get old enough to start watching shows geared towards older kids, I had just missed out on it. I only got around to watching Grim Adventures and Evil Con Carne rather recently.

But what I did grow up with was Chowder. I never remembered it well as I got older, but what did stick with me was "The Puckerberry Overloads." Child me struggled to comprehend the logic behind how Chowder could be in his own mouth. After rewatching the series recently, I was very surprised and excited to see you were credited as one of the writers and the storyboard artist for the episode. I even recognized your voice from one of the characters. I suppose you really were there all along.

So I wanted to ask, how did you end up doing some work for Chowder? Were you simply a guest of sorts? I also saw you credited as a writer and storyboard artist for another episode in another season, so how did that come to be? What I'm mostly curious about is how that factored all in with the Great Purge.

I would love to hear whatever you are willing to tell me. Thank you for reading.

Thank you for writing!

I'll still be around on here. I think the Patreon is probably a better place to ask questions if you really want an answer, since I'll try to answer every question on there. Here, I tend to cherry-pick and I've got a bit of a backlog.

Long story short, Billy & Mandy eventually wrapped, which left me to do Underfist and develop a couple of other properties for CN. My friend C.H. Greenblatt (creator and voice of Fred Fredburger, and writer of a number of memorable episodes) got his own series, "Chowder". They were having trouble finding a board artist to fill one of the slots, so I said I'd do a board. Greenblatt and I have always helped each other out when we can over the years. Just this year we got to produce Jellystone Season Two together, and it was the best time I've had on a series in a decade.

I did another board for Season Two, and that's about when "The Great Purge" happened. And there was no escaping that for anyone, really.

C.H. Greenblatt and I had a really fun Looney Tunes pitch we sold right before the pandemic hit. Like everything else during that time, it went into Deep Freeze. Maybe one day we can get back to it.

He'll definitely be making an appearance on "Billy & Mandy vs. The Entertainment Industry". More on that soon™!

#maxwell atoms #billy & mandy #chowder #cartoon network

[maxwellatoms]

plasec reply i sent ya a message in your dms

I'll go look! But just FYI (and the I of anyone else interested) I never look at my DMs. I sort of forgot that section of the site existed for a few years, and I managed to pile up an intimidating number of messages. Now I'm scared to even look in there.

I really need to put something on the front page that tells people not to bother. There could be job offers waiting in there for all I know, but I ain't opening that Pandora's Box!

#indirect messages